A treatise on the cure of ulcers by fumigation / George Alfred Walker.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the cure of ulcers by fumigation / George Alfred Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    78/136 (page 70)
    In the treatment of ulcers by fumigation, according to my method, three remedial agents of great power, yet endowed with different properties, are employed. These are sulphur, iodine, and heated air. And it may be well to bestow a few words on each, separately, before we speak of the effects produced by their combined agency, and the advantages which distinguish this method from all others. The action of heated air on ulcers, wounds, &c., was first clearly pointed out by Dr. Guyot,* in a remark- able work which he published at Paris, in 1842 ; and as the treatise is not much known in this country, a brief analysis of its contents may be useful. Dr. Guyot commences with the proposition that “ the proximate and determining cause of the formation of living beings, is beat.” In the inorganic world, bodies are formed by attraction and re- pulsion, depending on affinity, which latter seems to be intimately connected with electricity. In the organic worldj it is difficult to arrive at the primary cause of life; but it may be asserted that heat is the chief, if not the sole agent’ by which the dormant elements of an organised body are excited to liviuaction. Let us consider the condition of a seed, a germ, an egg. Without the prolonged action of a vivifying principle, the seed would remain a seed—the egg, an egg; and this principle is beat. Again, it is to * De l’Emploi tie la Chalcur tlans le Traitement des Ulceres, ties Plaies, &c., par M. le Docteur Jules Guyot. Paris, 1842.